Sunny is critical of timing

New Delhi/Bangalore: Former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar feels the BCCI could have postponed the players' auction for the 5th edition of Indian Premier League after they came to know about Sahara India's decision to snap its sponsorship contract with Team India and also its withdrawal from the IPL.

The following are excerpts (alphabetically):

Sunil Gavaskar: I think there must have been a clause to terminate a contract and Sahara would have taken legal advice before pulling out. But I feel once it was known that Sahara are pulling out, may be the auction could have been postponed till a resolution was arrived. If Pune was not a part of IPL V, then their players would have been in the auction.

It turnes out to be bad timing for IPL auction.

In a weeks time or 10 days, there would have been a lot of clarity in the matter and if Pune is not a part of IPL V, perhaps there will be another auction and then there would be an increase in purse and so there would be compromises.

It is certainly unfair. If you are a player of Pune, you would be worried. You had a two year contract and suddenly you find you don't have a team to play for. So, players will be worried.

Darren Lehmann: VVS is a great player and I'm sure he will be bought by some franchise down the line. But we bought a younger player in Brad Hodge in place of Laxman. We are happy.

Siddharth Mallya: We are absolutely thrilled to have someone of Murali's (Muttiah Muralidharan) calibre. Anyone who has got over 1000 international wickets, no matter what age he is of, he is always an asset. It was fantastic buy and fantastic addition to our squad. Murali was always on our list and to have him is quite fantastic. We have Anil Kumble as the mentor of the team, we have Daniel Vettori as captain and now we have Murali... we have a strong spin-bowling unit.

Harbhajan Singh: It would have been nice to get Sunil Narine on board but unfortunately we could not get him. Mitchell Johnson was a very good buy and I hope that he will be fit to play all the matches. We did not get Narine and Brendon McCullum but we are happy with the team combination. Luckily, we have got the players we were looking for. We have got a very strong bowling line-up and we can now definitely explore a lot of options. We can field a different kind of team altogether depending on what kind of surface we are playing. For me, it was something very new. I was little tense… it was more intense than playing cricket.